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Mar 27, 2008

Well it looks like hard times have come again once more, but it helps to keep a sense of perspective on these things. It may be bad, but we'll get through it; we always have in the past. People have been predicting the fall of the United States ever since the rise of the United States. Here's a list of some things people thought would ruin the country. I have categorized them loosely by the last four generations of my own family, starting with the most recent. Some of the concerns listed were serious and some were laughable, I'll let you decide which were which.

First Generation (Me, Mine)

Communism

Capitalism

Japan and Saudi Arabia

Iraq and Iran

Nicaragua and Grenada

The "Asian Tigers" and "The Pacific Rim"

Immigration

911

Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Nixon, LBJ, JFK

Global Warming

Computers

Rap

The United Nations

Drugs

Television

Second generation (My Parents)

Communism

Capitalism

Nazism

Radio

Immigration

Fluoridated Drinking Water

Drugs

Secular Humanism

Civil Rights, Feminism, Hippies, AIM, etc.

Overpopulation

The Great Depression

Huey Long

FDR

The League of Nations

Rock and Roll

Third Generation (My Grandparents)

Communism

Capitalism

Labor Unions

The Kaiser

Cuba

The Gold Standard

William Jennings Bryan

Charles Darwin

Immigration

Alcohol

Moving Pictures

Jazz

The Panic of 1907, 1893

Herbert Hoover

Suffragettes

Fourth Generation (My Great-Grandparents)

Communism (First Red Scare? 1848!)

Capitalism

Rum

Romanism

Rebellion

Sitting Bull

Immigration

Mexico

Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, James K. Polk

Charles Darwin

Railroads

Novels

The Panic of 1884, of 1875, of 1857, and of 1837.

Reconstruction

The Tariff

Fifth Generation (Bonus!)

The British

Witches

Immigration

Pontiac, Tecumseh, Cornstalk, Osceola

Aaron Burr

BarringtonBoardman wrote, in "Flappers, Bootleggers, "Typhoid Mary" and the Bomb: An Anecdotal History of the U.S. from 1923-1945," about a man who reacted to the stock market crash of 1929 with something like the following, "Well it doesn't mean we have to take to the trees and throw coconuts at one another." My sentiments exactly.